Why, in the nearly 3,000 years since the gardens were presumably built, has no archeological evidence ever been found to support their existence? Is the Hanging Garden of Babylon a myth or a mystery to be solved?

According to Paul Collins of the Ashmolean Museum of Art, and featured in the film, “All sources say that the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were there at Babylon and so it’s been assumed that’s where they must have been.”

What if, for all of these centuries, archeologists have been searching for the gardens in the wrong place? What if King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, believed to have built the gardens, is the wrong king?

Who Built Hanging Gardens of Babylon?

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Dr. Stephanie Dalley, an expert on the ancient cuneiform texts, is one of a handful of people who can read this language which dates back to the Babylonian era. Her translation of the cuneiform on a prism at the British Museum, leads her to an intriguing theory about the location, builder, and look of the Hanging Garden.

Dr. Dalley, an expert on the ancient cuneiform texts, is one of a handful of people who can read this language which dates back to the Babylonian era. Her translation of the cuneiform on a prism at the British Museum, leads her to an intriguing theory about the location, builder, and look of the Hanging Garden.

What did the prism reveal that caused Dr. Dalley “to reassess everything we thought we knew about the hanging garden of Babylon”? If the gardens were not built in Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar, then where were they built and by whom?

Photo credit: Courtesy of Bedlam Productions

The Assyrian Gallery at the British Museum.

Nearly 50 years ago, Dr. Dalley visited a site in Iraq where she saw the beginnings of a canal system. In the documentary, she goes back to this site and later meets with a colleague in Iraq, Jason Ur, an anthropological archaeologist from Harvard, who uses an American spy satellite program – declassified since the mid-1990s – to study landscapes. The ancient landscape under study is an area, nowhere near Babylon, ruled by a king who lived 100 years before Nebuchadnezzar.

What the satellite imagery discloses – hidden underneath fields – is a canal system with water ways, in parts the width of the Panama Canal, stretching from the Zagros Mountains that border Iran across the plains of Northern Iraq.

Does this canal system prove that the expertise to transport water existed centuries ago? Who is the king capable of constructing such a canal system? Could he have built the elaborately tiered Hanging Gardens?

Archimedes' Screw & The Date Tree of Babylon

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Archimedes of Syracuse is known for inventing a device that efficiently raised water for irrigation. Dr. Stephanie Dalley translated a cuneiform text from of the Assyrian king Sennacherib which led her to believe the Hanging Gardens of Babylon made use of a comparable device approximately 350 years before the time of Archimedes.

Also, on the satellite map, Ur sees the Jerwan Aqueduct, one of the earliest known aqueducts in history. When Dr. Dalley visits the site of this aqueduct, what evidence does she find to support her theory? What’s the connection between the aqueduct and the garden relief Dr. Dalley saw at the British Museum?

How does tracing the meaning of a word explain an engineering breakthrough that maintained the flow of water needed to keep the garden thriving? As Dr. Dalley systematically lays out her chain of evidence, the program explores whether she really found the legendary Hanging Garden of Babylon.

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The Lost Gardens of Babylon: Preview

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This film examines a world wonder so elusive that most people have decided it must be mythical. Centuries of digging have turned up nothing — but the searchers were digging in the wrong place. Now, this film proves that the spectacular Hanging Gardens of Babylon did exist, shows where they were, what they looked like and how they were constructed.